all your words and closeness keep you here and human
by copesmate
Summary: Book of Job AU "I'd like to make you a wager, Doctor," Madame Kovarian grates. "My bespoke psychopath versus your loving archaeologist. Man versus self, the eternal battle. Who will win, I wonder?"


" _Man depends on God for all things: God depends on man for one. Without man's love God does not exist as God, only as creator, and love is the one thing no one, not even God himself, can command. It is a free gift or it is nothing. And it is most itself, most free, when it is offered in spite of suffering, of injustice, and of death . . . The justification of the injustice of the universe is not our blind acceptance of God's inexplicable will, nor our trust in God's love, his dark and incomprehensible love, for us, but our human love, notwithstanding anything, for him._ "  
― Archibald MacLeish

PROLOGUE: _WHENCE COMEST THOU?_

 _(_ _then satan answered the lord, and said, doth job fear god for nought? hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. but put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.)_

"Where have you been hiding? Watching your army fall from the safety of your base?"

"I've been _watching_ , Doctor. On Earth and in space, watching your influence on man. Heady, isn't it? Knowing that you've saved them and damned them over and over. No one is free from your influence or free to choose where you're concerned, do you know that? All those possibility threads of time and space, and in every one, man is wrapped around your little finger."

"Don't be _ridiculous_." He thinks about the choices people have made; to leave him, to _die_ -he thinks of how River Song refused his request tonight and his eyes narrow.

"I'd like to make you a wager, Doctor," Madame Kovarian grates. The smile forced across her face is terrifying, blade thin and unpracticed; it's more of a grimace than anything else. Her cheeks crinkle and the skin edges up over her eyepatch and one eye squints. The expression reaches her eyes but not in the way it's supposed to. He thinks of little Melody in her control and winces. This is not a mothering face. He'd never thought of Kovarian as a warrior, but she's far more of that than she is a mother. "My bespoke psychopath versus your loving archaeologist. Man versus self, the eternal battle. Who will win, I wonder?"

"Your-my- _what_? Are you talking about River?" Another thing to be furious over this evening; River Song is hiding in her cell in Stormcage, refusing to come out. 'This is the night he finds out who I am,' she had told Rory, and maybe now is the hour of reckoning. Who Is River Song is about to be answered, and he wonders how much of the Silence there is in her as well. He also wonders if this is the time for another betrayal.

"Of course I am. And you don't know yet, do you? Don't worry, it's soon. The world bends to its close, and all things come to an end. She couldn't hide behind the enigma forever. But that's immaterial, because here is my bet: Doctor Song isn't yours."

He's shaken by the proclamation, not because it changes anything but because it attempts to supersede one of the few things that he knows to be constant. "I already know that she is," he responds lowly, clenching his fingers in the thick tweed of his greatcoat. "What are you assuming?"

"Oh, _nothing_ ," Kovarian smirks. "Just that she's not yours by predisposition or freedom of choice. She's yours because you made her that, because you gave her the universe and put stars in the palm of her hand. Give anyone such power, such bounty, and they'll worship at your feet until someone comes along with better."

"That's preposterous," the Doctor says quietly, albeit not as surely as before. On the screen, Kovarian's face scrunches itself into a genuine smile, cruel and gleeful enough to send cold shivers down his spine. "She's always been free to choose."

"What _is_ freedom?" The question is rhetorical, and Kovarian quirks her head to the side, mocking a quizzical air even as she continues. "I don't think you understand it, _Doctor_. Freedom is the _right_ to choose; freedom is River Song's right to choose, to create for herself the alternatives of choice and ultimately make a decision not predicated on whether or not her precious Doctor will make it so. You've never given her the space to choose, Doctor, merely inserted yourself into her life and feigned surprise when she played into your little hands."

His hands clench at her words. "How does River Song factor into this?"

"You didn't for a moment think we were going to leave a single stone unturned? But now, I want to ask you: do you take this?"

"What?" He scoffs at her, anger taking the imperative. "Am I going to bet with you? Bet not by any material stakes but on the life and autonomy of a woman I have no rightful jurisdiction over? How are you going to _compel_ me? I've beaten you and your Silents already, I can do it again. I _have_ done it again. What's in your hands to make me do this, some promise of things to come? Because believe me, you really shouldn't bet against me when it comes to time, Madame Kovarian. If there's one thing I know and one thing I have power over, it is _Time_. I'll tell you what I'm taking, _Madame_ ; I'm taking the Ponds, all three of them, and we are leaving here, and you can do nothing to stop us!"

"The battle's won," Madame Kovarian says, grinning so widely that he _knows_ what's going to happen before she says it, "but the child is _lost_. Those are my stakes, Doctor. Melody Pond." Shadows shift behind her and she is cast into shadow, darkness limning the lineaments of her face and rendering her complexion sinister. "This is my wager; you leave the Doctor Song to me, and Melody Pond is yours."

He itches to run to the Ponds and find out what's happening with Melody now but holds himself to stand there, staring down the grinning menace regarding him from the viewing screen. "What are your terms?"

"Simple. You've given River Song the world and everything beyond it. That's why she loves you, you know. Have you seen the way power makes people positively gravitate to you? Flatter yourself by thinking it's you, I'm sure you already have, but that's dreadfully unlikely. She loves you because you've made for her something beyond man sitting on his dung heap, cursing the universe as Earth spins into oblivion. Reverse that, why don't you? See what happens when your precious gifts are snatched away and she's left to face the world without a guarantee of Time Lord intervention."

"For Melody Pond?" He feels a pang at the words, knowing exactly what he will do even as he asks. Betrayal. But he's ultimately giving River Song the luxury of choice, something _she_ never gave _him_. She roped him into this at the start, but that doesn't mean he'll stoop to her level. And if freedom of choice means rewriting the future to not include him, then so be it. "I accept."

"And as for Melody Pond, had better _run_ ; she's disappearing fast." The shadows envelop Kovarian's face slowly, fading out sound and vision. All that's left now is the white of that terrible rictus and the faint sound of a child squalling in the background-from _her_ end.

 _Melody_.

He runs, furious with the knowledge that she's tricked him.

(Later, he finds out that she hasn't tricked him and that their wager still stands, albeit with the stakes raised double. River Song smiles at him and he knows he owes her the autonomy of choice; Melody Pond is smiling at him and he knows he owes her the same.)

ONE: MELODY

[ _"What's the world's greatest lie?... It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate." ―_ Paulo Coelho]

i.

" _I wish I could tell you that you'll be loved. That you'll be safe and cared for and protected. But this isn't a time for lies. What you are going to be, Melody… is very, very brave_."

ii.

Melody understands four languages and is age-appropriately fluent in three of them; she is four years ahead in maths and almost six ahead in reading comprehension. She is also eight years old.

She knows she is impossibly strong because every night her mentors tell her she is, tell her that the injections are working; she's a marvel of genetics and a godsend. She doesn't feel marvellous; locked away in a room that is little more than a cell and fed by a nervous-looking cleric, she feels like a disgraced prisoner. Her room is dark, cold, and often empty-most of her time is spent learning, practicing, rehearsing. The blow that will kill the Doctor must come from her, Kovarian says. The shot heard 'round the world will come from her small hands, and from then on time and space will be theirs.

"It's not because you're special," Madame Kovarian says as she reviews Melody's progress reports, regarding her with a look that resembles disgust. "Frankly, it could have been anyone; we have ways of bending people to our will. But a Time Lord was lucky, and the daughter of his friends? We weren't going to pass you up, both for the heartbreak we'll cause him and the chance to study you. Give us a few years; we'll be able to clone Time Lords. Do you know how useful they are? We can harvest regeneration energy from them, power the universe; harvest organs and form a monopoly; take the TARDIS and pilot it to our whims. You're a gift, Melody Pond, even if you are…well, a child. And _rebellious_ ," she sniffs with annoyance, flipping through the last page as Melody shifts nervously in her seat. "You should begin speaking Mandarin at some point, you know. And I'm moving to have you begin learning Hindi, or maybe Farsi. Gallifreyan is important, but not essential."

Melody nods, picking at her fingernails. They're already mostly gone, and her cuticles are scabby.

(She knows better than to speak up where Kovarian is concerned; she's never upset her, only gotten a chilling look for asking once if there really _was_ nothing good about the Doctor, because he hadn't seemed all that bad, just stupid, when she met him.)

"Stop doing that," Kovarian orders, and drops the pages back onto her desk. "We're taking you to New York, I think about 1969. There are Silence operatives there, so it's easy to lock onto them temporally. And the Doctor as well, with your parents. And you, although neither of you know that."

Staring at her like she's sprouted a third eye in the middle of her forehead, Melody remains quiet. Her thumb is bleeding again, and she shoves it into her mouth in a hope to stop the blood.

"Phase One, Melody. Let's see you kill the Doctor then, shall we?"

iii.

"He's like a god," Kovarian says as they board a starliner and head to Earth. "Used to call himself the 'lonely god', though you've doubtlessly read that by now. Benevolent and omnipotent… shame he's chosen to overlook you, isn't it?"

"He hasn't!"

"Oh, that's _right_ ," comes the sarcastic reply. "He's been here for you all this time, hasn't he? So why are you here with us, Melody Pond? Some cunning trap or brilliant escape on his part? Or does he just _not care_ enough to come find you, the daughter of his best friends?"

"Of course he's coming for me," Melody snaps back before she can stop herself.

"Or maybe the sky god doesn't _care_ ," Kovarian muses, turning her back to her. "Maybe he is fallible."

"He's the _Doctor_ ," Melody says, clenching her fists tightly. "He's coming for me."

"If God is good, he is not God," Kovarian says quietly. The two armed guards that flank her clench their guns tightly for a moment. "I'm not talking about _your_ god, of course. But think of this one, the impossible benefactor. The people of the Gamma Forests know him as a mighty warrior, the Daleks as the Destroyer, the humans simply as the Doctor. I'd ask you what you know him as, Melody, but you don't have anything to base your opinion on, only the false hopes you've inherited from your mother. So is he what you think he is, your great protector who just doesn't care, or is he the man you'll be killing soon?"

"He's the Doctor," Melody insists again, but even as Kovarian laughs and the guards exchange dubious looks, she knows the words are hollow and worn in her mouth. The word 'Doctor' means something different to everyone, and it's starting to mean _gone_ to her.

"If God is God, he is not good," Kovarian repeats as she turns to go, "and if God is good, he is not God. Think on that for a while, Melody, and do remember all that he's done for you."

Kovarian means by this that he has done nothing, but Melody sits in the galley of the ship with a secret smile hidden in the corner of her mouth as they proceed through time and space. She _does_ remember.

iv.

She has her mother's nose and her father's hair and a good part of their genetics along with the Time Lord set. She has also managed to inherit her mother's faith in the Doctor's ability to save her. Despite having been raised to destroy him, she doesn't hate him. Despite having studied him (the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Saturnynians, even his own people, all fallen at his hands), she can't bring herself to see only the evil Madame Kovarian tells her about.

( _She remembers shadowy flashes of a stupid man in a stupid tie with a stupid grin and an expression of love in his eyes, and Big Milk Thing and Clattering Holding Thing laughing and crying and talking in voices she couldn't quite understand at that point. But the Stupid Man had held her and spoken to her in words she could, and Big Milk Thing was 'Mummy' and she was Melody and he was the Doctor and he spoke baby and she really didn't think even then that there could be an ounce of anything besides love in that man._ )

"The Doctor's gonna save me, you know," she informs the closest Silent as it straps her arms into the bizarre framework of her suit. "He's watching out for me, and I'm watching out for him. I'm not gonna kill him."

YOU DO NOT SPEAK OF HIM, the Silent replies, looking up at her. HE CARES NOTHING FOR YOU. YOU ARE OURS, MELODY POND.

The Silent behind it (him? she wonders, but does not assume) raises a thick-fingered hand, sparking with electricity. YES, it declares, YOU WILL BE SILENT, MELODY POND. AND YOU WILL KILL THE DOCTOR.

The suit jerks to life and she screams as it begins to move her limbs without her control. Panic squeezes her chest and constricts her breathing; her vision blurs and she struggles against it.

AS WE HAVE SAID, MELODY POND, YOU WILL KILL THE DOCTOR.

" _No_!" She cries out, but the hood has already snapped shut and she is trapped.

v.

She remembers flashes of being strapped into a suit, she remembers vaguely that she has to kill someone— _him_. Other than that, her memory is blank as to why.

The straps that bind her hands into the framework aren't quite as tight as they could have been, and as the suit moves jerkily through the empty office building, slowly beginning to accommodate her body. Swallowing her terror, the rising panic at the fact that she's losing control again, she tugs at the bonds as hard as she can, feeling them first cut into her skin, then give around her wrists. The suit jolts to a stop, its internal programming trying to make sense of what has broken inside of it and how to rectify it, giving her enough time to free her arms from the sleeves completely.

The hood slides up and she begins to pull herself out, only to have it snap shut back on her with bruising force, narrowly missing her nose and crushing her fingers. Blinking back tears and sucking on her fingers to stop the bleeding and dull the pain, she decides to go forward instead.

Wires and tubing are the only things barring her way out, and she scuffles with them as quickly as possible, tearing through them and the fabric of the suit as she clambers out of it.

 _Air._ Real air, not the filtered oxygen the suit provides. Behind her, the suit shudders. To her horror, she can see the fabric already beginning to mend where she ripped it and the suit unzipping itself, its hood snapping open. It lurches toward her, helmet gaping open like a mouth and the metal teeth of the zipper flashing in the dim light.

The communicator in the suit is constantly switched to on, but she's never gotten a connection before until she drags through the wiring this time, and it crackles to life.

"Hello? This is President Nixon. Who is this? Where did you get this number?"

She backs into a wall and the space suit turns blindly after her, its hand extending to grab her and she sees something she's never seen before, embedded in its glove: the muzzle of a blaster.

" _The spaceman's coming to eat me_!" She screams and runs—she's been wandering in a murdering machine, lying in wait for the Doctor—she has to get out, has to warn him!

"The what? Who are you? Where are you? How did you get this number?"

She runs face-first into the thin metal of the shades that hang over all the windows in the facility. Pulling it open, she stares out the window for context regarding where she is. A street sign—three names.

"Jefferson; Adams; Hamilton," she reads breathlessly, and feels the empty glove on her back as the suit pulls her towards it, the gaping unzipped canvas yawning out at her like a gaping mouth to swallow her whole. The transmission cuts and she screams.

vi.

 _I make my own fate_ , she tells herself as the suit advances, as her mother points a gun at her, hands shaking and nearly sobbing. She feels curiously detached; _Don't let your hands shake, you'll miss_ -

And there's a gunshot and the sound of a bullet ricocheting and her shoulder explodes with pain, and then there is silence. She thinks she can hear her mother crying.

vii.

It's taken her too long to die. The wound in her shoulder is still festering but she's caught an infection, a disease that sends coughs wracking down her spine and through her lungs. Winter is freezing, especially for a girl who's never had to leave the Silence institution; her fingers shake numbly as she pulls her thin jacket tighter around her. Her teeth clatter together and she coils in behind a dumpster, shoving her hands into her armpits.

She chokes when she tries to breathe too deeply; her lungs are giving out, even she can feel that. Her hearts beat a frantic tattoo under the burden of keeping her body going. In retrospect, she should have tried to fight this, should have fought harder to stay alive. But right now, the future is fabulous. The choice to die is heady and intensely empowering; the choice to die puts her own life in her hands for the first time. She's stranded in New York until she regenerates, of course, but it's on her own terms.

"Are you okay?"

She stands up and stumbles forward. A homeless man pushing a cart is leaning forward to stare at her. She coughs hollowly.

"Little girl, are you okay?"

"It's all right," she reassures him with a smile. She can feel her left heart slowing and its beat stopping in her chest. "It's quite all right. I'm dying."

He looks at her incredulously, and she has to fight the urge to giggle. Her other heart slows and she feels lightheaded, giddy; the beginnings of pain are tingling on her arms but she doesn't even notice them.

"But I can fix that. It's easy, really." Her heart stops and her body stills for a moment. The most curious sensation works down her spine and along her limbs, little prickles of heat dancing under her skin and pushing gently out. They hurt; not a good hurt, but an _interesting_ hurt. It fizzes.

"See?"

The sensation compounds into heat and explodes out of her skin; her vision is fuzzy but she can see the gold surrounding her and streaming upward.

She's changing.

INTERLUDE: _ALL THIS JOB SINNED NOT_

 _(and satan answered the lord, and said, skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. but put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face. and the lord said unto satan, behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life_.)

He doesn't feel like any sort of lonely god anymore, just like a lonely old man with too much time on his hands and too much to do. There's also the fact that he feels like he's betraying them all, but he tries to overlook that.

River deserves the right to choose, and nothing can override that. He tells himself that he has all of her future to contend with; that by not interfering and letting fate take its toll he can give her the autonomy that Kovarian wagered. Of course, there's more to it than that. There's always more to it than that.

Rule One: The Doctor Lies.

It's hellishly essential to who he is, and he hates it more than he can say. When Amy asks him to find Melody, he promises he will; Rule One invoked. Rory tells him to look after his little girl if he can; he promises again.

After that, he drops the Ponds off at home and runs as far and as fast as he can go because there is nothing else left to do. He leaves their daughter in Kovarian's terrifyingly capable hands and runs until he doesn't think he can bear it, and then runs again.

He meets Kovarian on the edge of the universe in an abandoned nuclear facility and she laughs at him.

"I see you've figured me out," she says.

"You're not going to sway her," he bites out. He doesn't like her laughing but what he does like is behind it and beneath it, a spur of nerves and exhaustion. Madame Kovarian is fracturing at the seams and under her bravado. (He is as well, but he doesn't admit that to himself. What is important is that she is losing hope, not that he is.)

She laughs again and shrugs noncommittally. "Time moves in mysterious ways, _Doctor_. Do you think you'll feel your past unraveling slowly, or will it just happen abruptly? You've lasted long enough, Doctor; you're not as infallible as you think."

"I know River Song," he says simply. His hands are shaking and his mind is curiously devoid of response.

"You know the River Song you created, Doctor. But what about the one you leave in the ashes? She's Melody Pond now, Doctor; she's not your precious archaeologist, and never will be."

"You don't understand people, do you? For all your posturing and all your resources, you've never really _gotten_ them, have you? Give a man something and you earn his favour, but you can't give someone something and expect _love_ in return. Love is one of those humany things you've never quite understood, isn't it? Do you wonder about it sometimes, wonder why, for all that you give, you still can't earn love? It's because you've set your sights on changing the one thing you can't understand. And that's why you're going to fail; that's why people and organisations like you have _always_ failed-because you underestimate humans and their capacity to love."

"Or perhaps you rely on it too much, Doctor," Kovarian replies, and her grin is stretched so wide that he can see cracks in the façade. "The eternal optimist, aren't you? You overestimate human capacity to love, and you're blinded by it. You protect a species that constantly does worse to itself and to that which is in its power than any outside influence would ever do to it, and you consider yourself justified. So much genocide in the name of one stupidly undeserving species. And as for Melody Pond, what will you do for her? Hope aimlessly while she realises what you _really_ are?"

"I think I understand the human capacity to love perfectly well, Madame Kovarian. It's love and their propensity for it that's allowed them to survive any ills they've perpetuated. You've seen species crumble under the weight of their own cruelty, but man-man _survives_ and grows because of it, evolving to become a better sort. As some species grow and modernise, they become cruel—you've seen the Daleks and Cybermen, who expand and enslave as they progress. Humans shed those tendencies as they progress into the future; their compassion evolves and grows as time goes by. And as for River Song, I won't do anything for her. I don't need to hope aimlessly, do I? I'm perfectly comfortable knowing that this is a choice for her to make, not for us to force her into."

PART TWO: MELS

[" _But who can remember pain, once it's over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind._ " ― Margaret Atwood, _The Handmaid's Tale_ ]

i.

"Spoilers" doesn't really begin to cover the situation. But then again, it never has; Melody Pond is well and truly spoilered out.

Mels, actually. Mels _Zucker,_ which is the single most unappealing name she's ever witnessed. But oh, how she wishes that her problems were limited to a stupid name.

She can't even remember most of her problems, just a faint sense that they exist and that they're terrifying. Perhaps it's better that way.

"You're a complete _idiot_ ," Amy says. "What are you looking at, anyway?"

Mels twirls the little clay TARDIS between her fingers and doesn't say anything, only smiles. Rory watches her from where he's perched in the corner of Amy's room on a chair. They're all a little past drunk and all Mels can do, really, is smile.

"You can't keep doing this, you know," Rory says and frowns unsteadily. She's struck slightly by how poignantly painful this should be; he's fathering her although he doesn't even know it. Rory's always been a bit more understanding of her than she expected, and sometimes it frightens her.

"Doing _what_?"

"Everything," Amy speaks up from where she lies on her bed, her arm dangling off the edge, holding an empty bottle of beer. "The Doctor stuff, stealing cars, booze—I know you're trying to hide it, but I've seen a gun in your bag once. You're our friend, Mels, but this is stupid. You're gonna get yourself killed. You're lucky Rory's a nurse, 'cause the Doctor isn't going to drop down out of the sky and patch you up."

"Yeah," Rory adds lamely. "And I might not even do that, you know."

"Don't talk to me about the Doctor," Mels says, rolling her eyes. _If only they knew_ , she thinks. If only she could tell them that there is coming a day where they'll rely wholly on the Doctor and travel with him. "Who's got a room full of clay figures of him and that ship of his—and not just one, mind you. If there's one, there's twenty."

Amy flushes. "I was a kid when I made those."

"Are you still a kid now, keeping them?"

"Regardless," says Rory, jumping to Amy's aid with such a look that Mels is surprised Amy hasn't caught on by now, "she doesn't talk about it in school. She's not going off at the head teacher—the _head teacher_ , Mels—about how Hitler's rise to power actually had something to do with the Doctor. That's crazy."

"Can you prove otherwise?"

"Stop doing that! There's lots of things I can't disprove, but that doesn't mean they're true. The Doctor was just some stupid thing when I was a kid, I could've dreamed it for all I know."

"But you didn't."

"I don't think I did. Hell, he could have been some kind of nut, I could have gotten snatched."

"Don't be stupid; he's the Doctor." Mels is getting bored of this; she likes Amy and Rory when they're not constantly telling her off for things she does. Admittedly, half of the reason she hates being told off about them is because people ask her _why_ she did it or _where_ the idea came from, and she's never sure. Just showed up, mostly; sometimes she knows that she had to do something, but never _why_. And she doesn't want to think about it.

"Do you see that? Oh my god, Mels. You've never even _met_ him, what the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm leaving," Mels says shortly, grabbing her bag and pulling herself to her feet. "This is boring."

"You're still an idiot," Amy says, sitting up unsteadily. "I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

"Only if you shut up about the Doctor," Mels says and stalks out the door.

"Why don't you?" Amy bites back as she settles back on her bed.

Mels dashes out into the cold night air and tries to tell herself she's not blinking back tears. Tomorrow she and Amy will meet up and everything will be back to normal, she tells herself, and she won't think about the Doctor.

She doesn't want things to go back to normal; she wants the Doctor back and she wants Amy to believe her. She wants Amy to believe in her faith in a man she's never met or heard anything about. She'd like some proof that the Doctor has anything to do with Hitler; he's got a time machine, yeah, but she's got such faith in him not having stopped Hitler that she'd like proof as to why. Why does she want him _back_ , why does she want to see him, why does she even _care_ —

She's home now, and fumbling for her keys to unlock the door. It swings open and from the welcoming dark of her house she hears whispers, quiet and abruptly hushed as the door slams loudly shut behind her.

ii.

"You remember me, of course," Madame Kovarian says carelessly as she stalks into the room, a manila folder clenched tight in her hand. "It's been a while."

"Are you going to untie me?" Cold metal presses into Mels's back, freezing even through her bulky jumper. "And where the hell am I?"

The Silent behind Kovarian hisses a warning, electricity sparking to its gummy fingertips.

"Oh, don't do that," Kovarian replies with a roll of her eyes. Eye. Mels assumes that the eye behind the eyepatch is rolling as well. "And no, we're not going to untie you. Too much energy has gone into getting you here. As for where you are, that's unimportant. It's a Silence facility and you're not going to escape, so your surroundings are immaterial."

"Well then, why am I here?" Affecting bravado is becoming a challenge, and Mels bites her lip as Kovarian grins at her.

"It's time for Stage Two, of course." With an air of disinterest she examines her fingernails. "Stage One was a dismal failure, and if you weren't so valuable to both us and him, we'd have sold you for parts after that first regeneration."

Mels leans up and takes in the best view of the room she can get with her body strapped down; it's cold and clinical, although that's expected. The room is lined with clerics and Silents alternating. Madame Kovarian leans over her and snaps an eyepatch over her eye.

"You might as well be able to remember this whole thing while you're here, we'll extract it once you've left," she informs Mels and turns to leave. A cleric reaches out to stop her, but she brushes him aside.

( _Years later the same patch is snapped into River Song's eye voluntarily when she captures Madame Kovarian on the Giza Necropolis. Area 52 is wide and empty and it suddenly fills her with dread because she can remember all of it, the Gamma Forests and training and injections, the clerics and the doctors and the whispers of The Doctor, so unlike all of them. All tales of him are just whispers, but the whispers serve the Silence's purpose._

 _He's a warrior, the memories whisper, and not to be trusted. He ravages the land and the forests burn and he is wonderful, beautiful, saved us all—but do not cross him, rely on him, trust him. He told us to run, and when we did he was wonderful, but when we returned he was gone and our cities lay in dust and rubble._

 _But she can remember the good as well, because learning about the Doctor is not just learning of his evils but of the entire dichotomy of him._

 _She remembers crying sometimes from the sheer frustration of it all; waiting and waiting and Amy might have waited but at least she had some guarantee. Mels waits for a shadowy fairytale that might never come for her._

 _Years later, she remembers the moment she knew she loved him, the memory she won't be able to keep. Her books tell her of the Gallifreyans and their fate, and of how it is the Doctor's fault. The last of his kind, she thinks, and ignores the ill. So alone, so afraid. Her bespoke lonely god, Lord of Time and the protector of the Earth. Her hearts swell for him, and she thinks: I will make him less lonely. I love him, I can help him. And she knows: this is true. She'd never considered it truly, never pondered the depth of what she'd assumed to always be reverence. But she can't deny it now; she's fallen in love with a fairytale._

 _Years later, River Song cuffs Madame Kovarian to a chair and laughs at her, because she ruined her own cause by making him man, by making him human in all but biology. She can't save the memory, but she carries with her forever the knowledge that she loves him, she loves him, and everything happens as it ought to because of this._ )

iii.

When Mels returns to Leadworth, she finds a long, jagged scar down her stomach that she can't remember getting. It's mostly healed but the sight of it still nauseates her.

 _Imagine that_ , she thinks, _a psychopath sickened by the thought of blood._

 _A psychopath?_

Four months have passed since she left-another thing that terrifies her. Her muscle tone has increased dramatically and her hair is longer. She can run faster, jump higher, and breathe better.

She learns most of this when she breaks into a businessman's house, robs him blind, and makes off with his Corvette.

iv.

This is an _incredibly_ stupid situation. Luckily she's got a stupid name to match it.

Mels Zucker does sound like the kind of girl who _would_ get shot by Hitler.

Pain tolerance up, too, she notices; the bullet in her side feels like it's in her flesh, but not painfully. It just sits there and mocks her.

 _Let's kill Hitler, why don't we. Nothing could go wrong. Except everything, of course._

"Hey, look at me," the Doctor says. "Just hold on."

He's trying to be calming, but the sight of him makes her hearts race. "I used to dream about you," she tells him breathlessly. Her side is beginning to burn now, and her body to fail. The bullet hit _something_ , but she can't tell what.

"All those stories Amy told me." All those stories _someone_ told her. Amy didn't have much time to tell her anything, really; too busy with Rory and the universe.

"What stories? Tell me what stories. Vampires in Venice, that's a belter."

"When I was little," she continues doggedly, "I was going to marry you." _I love you. Isn't that pathetic?_

"Good idea, let's get married. You live and I'll marry you, deal? Deal?" He makes a joke of it and she knows from his eyes that he's just buying time, hoping her last few minutes will be happy. She's got _such_ a surprise for him.

"Shouldn't you ask my parents permission?" This is going to be excellent.

"Soon as you're well, I'll get on the phone."

"Might as well do it now, since they're both right here."

The three of them exchange nervous glances, and she can see realisation and awe dawning in the Doctor's eyes. Oh, this is nearly worth it. Sacrificing a body, getting shot by Hitler, all of this time spent waiting for him—the look in his eyes makes her think she might float.

"Penny in the air," she quips and she can feel her body fail. There's a moment of pure pain and then a flicker of life within her body, aching to burst out through her skin. It seeps from her pores and her body oozes with a desperate need to move. The Doctor stands up as her gaze begins to fuzz golden with regeneration energy. "Penny drops!"

He grabs Amy and Rory and shouts something that she can't quite hear as she stands up, inspecting her hands. "Last time I did this, I ended up a toddler in the middle of New York."

Her name cuts through the regenerative haze that's building around her; her senses dim but his voice jolts her out of it. "Mels," the Doctor asks, and there's a strained note in his voice. "Short for-?"

"Melody."

"Took me years to find you two," she tells her parents, grinning. She found them when she was eight, although she never quite understood how she got from New York to Leadworth. "I'm so glad I did. And, you see, it all worked out in the end, didn't it? You got to raise me after all."

"You're Melody?" The pair of them seem to be having trouble grasping what she's telling them; Amy's tone is dubious, and Mels is nearly offended by how she doesn't believe her.

"But if she's Melody, that means she's also... "

"Oh, shut up, Dad! I'm focussing on a dress size!"

She's always wanted to be curvy, taller, maybe a bit more mature looking because she doesn't think this whole promise of marrying the Doctor will go over well if she ends up a toddler again. And by focussing on a dress size, she thinks she might mean bra size. And weight. And a very particular shape to her legs. She hopes regeneration is customisable, because she really doesn't want to end up ridiculous.

v.

She's _hot_ , if she does say so herself. Racing into a side room with a mirror, she cups her breasts critically and fishes a tube of lipstick out of her bra. Hot and murderous, what a _combination_. And in Nazi Germany. She applies the lipstick and throws herself a little wink in the bathroom mirror. Turning around, she blinks in surprise as she inspects her arse.

She doesn't even bother to stop the exclamation of approval. "That's _magnificent_!" Magnificent might not even cover it, but she doesn't think she has a word in her vocabulary for how much she approves of the derriere that greets her. Also, she really likes her voice. Really, really likes it. It probably sounds different to those hearing her, but she likes the sound of her own voice enough that she might need to keep talking. "I'm going to wear _lots_ of jodhpurs," she announces as she leans against the doorframe, inspecting them all. Regeneration energy has made her hyperactive and it bubbles through her, sending pleasurable shudders down her spine. It's so _exciting_ to be alive. And hot. Did she mention hot, because, oh, it bears mentioning. Her waist contorts to the side slightly and she thinks she might have to invest in a catsuit to show this off, if she gets out of here with this regeneration still intact.

"Well now, enough of that," she says, remembering her job. She pulls a gun out of her clothes and aims it at the Doctor. "Down to business."

vii.

This is what she owes to him, she thinks now that she's sobered up and stopped celebrating her arse and her regenerative energy is only a fizz in the back of her mind.

 _Find River Song and tell her for me._

 _Tell her I'm sorry I wasn't there and that I love her, that I love her more than the universe can fathom._

The words are so simple but the way he _says_ them, the way he says them sends a thrill down her spine and she wishes they were for her.

"Well, I'm sure she knows," she hears herself say, and marvels that her tone isn't as bitter as she feels. _I'm sorry I wasn't there, Melody_ is what she wants from him. But a suspicion is growing in her mind as the regeneration energy gives her back her facilities.

"Who's River Song?" She turns to her mother and father, staring at her in shock.

Amy blinks and turns to Rory, who nods his agreement at whatever has passed between them, then turns to the Teselecta. "Are you still working? 'Cause I'm still a relative. Access files on River Song."

"Records available," the duplicate of her mother says.

"Show me her. Show me River Song."

The instant the hair begins to form, Mels— _River_ —knows that she is right. And oh, oh, oh _god_.

He's there and he loves her, the sky god. And he's come back.

It's over, all of it. All of the trials and now she's killed him—but wait.

"Melody, what did he say? The Doctor gave you a message for River Song. What was it?"

River ignores her as she turns within, reaches into herself. It's a curious sensation, all the time pulsing through her ears and her mind seems so small to host so much energy, but there it lies. Her entire future and all of the selves she could be. She takes it up within her and channels it through her body, holds it in her hearts and gives it love.

"What's happening? What are you doing?"

She lifts her hands as they begin to glow. "Just tell me. The Doctor, is he worth it?"

Her mother looks confused for a moment, but nods instantly. "Yes," she says, and her tone is strong and full of belief.

"Yes, he is."

And that's all she needs. She leans into him and presses her palms to either side of his face.

"River? No!" The energy fights her a moment before pressing into his skin, seeping through his pores, and they're surrounded with gold and a strange, ethereal hum as he stares up at her, whispering his protests. "What are you doing?"

"Hello, sweetie," she whispers, and it feels like a prayer. The energy swarms from her skin to his, and she can feel the energy healing and purging as his body regains its vigor. It leaves her hollow but feeling strangely full, and she looks into his eyes and presses her lips to his. For real now, none of this psychopathic insanity getting in the way. She kisses him and he kisses her back, kisses her like she is air and he has drowned and now he is drowning in her. She slips her tongue into his mouth and rests her forehead on his, the dizzying realisation of what she is doing echoing through her bones.

 _I love you,_ she thinks, _I trust you_. _Everything will be okay._

THREE: THE DOCTOR

[" _They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite_." ― Cassandra Clare, _Clockwork Prince_ ]

i.

This time when he runs, he meets River Song on the prison planet Volag-Noc, hiding in a tent on the side of a mountain.

She smiles brightly at him as he stumbles from the TARDIS through a snowdrift, removing the hood of her parka and offering him a seat next to her. Huddled in thick flannel blankets, they stare out over the prison facilities in silence. She offers him a thermos of hot tea and he takes it, taking a sip and savouring the taste. Her brain is searching for the right way to explain herself and he can feel it, can see the faraway look in her eyes that tells him she's lost in a galaxy of thought.

"We've done Jim the Fish, of course," she says, the faraway look fading. It's replaced with nostalgia, the sort of look that makes her eyes look warm and lovely and lights up her face. Her emotions remind him of why he loves her, sometimes. His bright speck of hope in a dim universe smiles sadly up at him and takes back her thermos. "Demon's Run?"

"Yes. A while ago."

"New York, 1938?"

He sobers as he nods, pulling the blanket more tightly around his body. "That was a few decades ago."

"New companion?"

"Spoilers," he says with a small smile.

"I was going to be imprisoned here," she says finally. "Stormcage's maximum security ward wasn't up to standard, and Volag-Noc, although old, seemed like the best choice. It's freezing—obviously—and the cells aren't heated. I guess I'm lucky I never was here."

"I'm responsible for putting loads of people here," he says quietly. She offers him the thermos again, twisting the top back on.

"I know."

"Why did you come here?"

"I've got an excavation here in a few weeks—it seems that before we used this planet for a prison, it housed an indigenous people. Terribly inventive lot—I've already found the remains of several temples under the ice. Why did you come here?"

"I knew you'd be here."

"No you didn't," she says, and her smile brightens as she shoves him good-naturedly. "You're a terrible liar. TARDIS take you somewhere randomly again?"

"She does that more and more now, especially for you." He knows the old girl can feel River's timeline coming to a close and is filling up her days with him, with Easter Island and weekends on the 3rd moon of Sinda Callesta, a month on Deva Loka and a day trip to watch the excavation of Atlantis. Taking another sip of the tea, he shudders and hopes she blames it on the cold. Darillium will be soon—one of these days the TARDIS will take him to her flat at the university and she will be packing her bags for a corporate investigation of the library and he will have no choice but to take her to watch the towers sing.

"I remember growing up," she says slowly. "I mean, not all of growing up; the Silence took a majority of that away. But I remember some things, like Amy and Rory, and one night I waited by my window in Leadworth and thought that if I could possibly wish hard enough, the TARDIS would materialize, and you'd be there. I loved you then, although I don't think I ever realised it. Loved you and began to doubt you, even then. But you never came, and Kovarian said you'd never show up because you wanted to give me a _choice,_ because you thought that you were noble and that would win me over. That you thought of me as a pawn whose free will was only important if it went to support you. And I ran because I thought that was true and terrible, and they hooked me up with a vortex manipulator and sent me to work as a mercenary, or sometimes kept me in a facility on some planet that they said was full of forests, but I never saw it because I never got outside the bunker. And they called you "the lonely god" and said that if you were really a deity, then why were you letting me suffer?"

"I'm no god," he says quietly, lacing his fingers together. "Never have been." He tries to not get angry with the Silence because their time has passed, tries not to get soppy on River because, once he starts wittering, the moment will be broken and she'll stop talking.

"I know that now, but not then. You were always the great sky-god, protector of the earth and this huge benefactor who everyone alternately owed favours or wanted to destroy. They told me that you were a god and I believed it for some time. But gradually I started to think, and they started to say: he can't be all-powerful, because if he were, no evil could exist. And I thought you were good for some time, but then I remembered the genocide and the anger, and _you_ , like fire and ice and rage, and all manner of extremes. You're like all of us, a dichotomy of light and dark, and sometimes just as powerless as the smallest man. And, knowing that, I could take anything they threw at me because I knew you were coming for me. I just didn't know how long it would take."

"I—I'm sorry," he breathes quietly, reaching out to take her hand and hold it tightly in his own. Through her gloves he can feel that she wears a thin band on the ring finger of her right hand. His fingers slip over the emerald cut stone and he thinks he might cry for how he ruined her then made her his and made him hers in some twisted form of a wedding that only counts because they hold it true.

"I'm not telling you this for pity," she says. Her camp stove has burnt out and in the pale light of the LED lantern that illuminates the tent, her eyes are the colour of absinthe and seem to contain depths. "I'm telling you this because I owe it to you, because whatever we are, I think there should be an honesty between us, or at least something spoiler-free."

"Do you want me to go back and change it? Find Melody and send her home to her parents?"

"Who would I be, then? Who would you be? Two strangers, probably. I'd grow up in cozy little Leadworth under the care of a sitter while Amy and Rory went off gallivanting around the world, probably not even Melody. Mels wouldn't happen. I wouldn't be me." She looks up at him and narrows her eyes mock-playfully. "Of course, you'd never do that, would you?"

"If you wanted me to, of course I would." And time would be rewritten up to the Library, where he might die or might get out safely because he wouldn't be dealing with River's expedition, or might lose Donna and himself in the dark annals of history as the Vashta Nerada close in and the shadows coagulate around them. But for her, yes. Anything for her. The thought shakes him because he's never really stopped to consider just how much he loves her, just takes it for granted that she'd tear the universe apart for him and he'd do the same. But faced with the actual _choice_ , it's amazing that he would.

"Don't rewrite time for me," she says quietly. "Sometimes I wonder, you know? Sometimes in Stormcage I wondered why Rory did it, why he waited for Amy all that time and gave her so much of him when she was content to run away with you at any given time, empathised with how one-sided his love seemed to be because I thought I had that, and that one day you'd love me like I loved you and it would all be worth it, all my time waiting and waiting for you. I feel so stupid, sometimes, knowing that it was there all along, and that I was wrong enough to doubt you even for a moment."

"You had every right—"

"I had no right. I presumed, and thought that because you loved me you'd be constantly there, shirking all responsibilities and avoiding spoilers because you had me and I had you. Because I _deserved_ the universe, never really thinking that there was a whole universe out there that deserved you more and needed you just the same."

"I owed you that, or at least something. Something more than years upon years of silence and Silence and waiting like you did. I don't deserve you, you know. I don't deserve _this_ , this…whatever we have." He falls silent for a second, rubbing his thumb over the bump of the ring on her finger. "I didn't deserve to have married you and I didn't deserve all those years you spent waiting on me. You deserve better than someone who left you on your own to the Silence."

"Don't get ridiculous in self-pity," she warns him dryly, curling her fingers into his. "You're probably right, but you've overlooked the fact that I don't deserve you either; that you really ought to have someone better than me, someone moral and capable of making you happy. Someone who doesn't make you feel guilty and who isn't so presumptuous."

Laughing hollowly, he stares out at the snowy wastes and holds as tightly as he can onto her knit-gloved fingers. "We're definitely something, aren't we?"

"Yes," she says simply, and the feeling of her lips softly touching his cheek makes him turn to her and hold her.

ii.

"I'm going on an expedition tomorrow," she says as she packs a salad into a metal tin. "The Luna Library. Some corporation wants to revisit its family pride or something ridiculous like that. Apparently it's empty now, and they want to find out why."

He stands still in horror and a cold thrill of panic runs down his spine. This wasn't supposed to happen _now_ , there was supposed to be more time—there was always supposed to be more time, because he doesn't think he'll ever have time enough. There is always supposed to be a way out, always a way to cheat death. Except now there isn't anymore and well, this is it. This is final.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, sorry," he responds, startled by how calm his voice sounds. "Just… planning."

EPILOGUE: _MY WORDS SHALL BE OF THE UPRIGHTNESS OF MY HEART_

(t _ouching the almighty, we cannot find him out: he is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: he will not afflict. men do therefore fear him: he respecteth not any that are wise of heart_.)

i.

 _I love him_ , she tells herself. _I love him. I trust him._

The Doctor's prone form begins to stir and she steels herself against the tears that are threatening to form.

AUTO-DESTRUCT IN TWO MINUTES

The Doctor's eyes open and he realises what she's doing the instant he makes eye contact with her. The cuff holds him back and he struggles. "Oh, _no, no no_ ," he says, and she can see the dread in his eyes, mixed with a little bit of anger. He looks so impossibly old now, and so impossibly lost. "What are you doing? That's my job."

She finds that within her she still has the gall to be flippant. "What, I'm not allowed to have a career, I suppose?"

"Why am I handcuf-why do you even _have_ handcuffs?"

" _Spoilers_ ," she says.

( _In 5446, on Darillium, her Doctor latches the cuffs around her wrists and presses a kiss to her nose as he slides down her body. She keeps the handcuffs when she leaves, if only because it seems like a good idea. You really never know when you'll need a good, sturdy pair of cuffs, she thinks as she packs them in her bag, under her lunch and next to the blaster._ )

"This is not a joke," the Doctor snaps. "Stop this now. This is going to kill you. I'll have a chance-you don't have any-"

She can see the lie in his eyes and taste it in the air, and if she weren't so caught up in dying she'd smirk at him and tell him that he won't ever be able to lie to her and get away with it. "You wouldn't have a chance," she says instead, "and neither do I. I'm timing it for the end of the countdown. There'll be a blip in the command flow. That way it should improve our chances of a clean download."

"River, please, no," he pleads.

She wonders what he thinks he can do; she wonders if he really thinks she'll relent now and let him wire himself in. "Funny thing is," she says conversationally-anything to hold the blasted tears away, "this means you've always known how I was going to die. All the time we've been together, you knew I was coming here. The last time I saw you -the real you, the future you, I mean-you turned up on my doorstep with a new haircut and a suit. You took me to Darillium to see the Singing Towers. Oh, what a night that was. The Towers sang... and you cried." Speaking of crying, not crying now is becoming a chore. When she was younger she told herself she'd greet death with open arms and a smirk on her face and maybe even a witty comment if she had the time. But faced with it, faced with the realisation that this is goodbye and that her worst day has arrived, faced with a Doctor who does not know her and a face that only shows fear, not love-it terrifies her. Death has always been a great unknown, but she thought she'd have more time to prepare to face it than just two minutes. She thought she'd retire and have a pension and sit back in a comfortable flat as far from the university as was humanly possible and just… wait. Get herself into order and say her goodbyes and once she'd made her peace, go on one last adventure.

AUTO-DESTRUCT IN ONE MINUTE

And here she is, wasting her last minute of life arguing with a younger version of the man she loves.

"You wouldn't tell me why, but I suppose you knew it was time-my time, time to come to The Library. You even gave me your sonic screwdriver-that should have been a clue."

The Doctor looks up now, sees his sonic and hers and strains for them.

"There's nothing you can do."

"Let me do this!"

"If you die here, it'll mean I've never met you," she says, and she thinks that this would be such a noble gesture if she weren't being so selfish with it. Of course she wants him to live, but more than anything she is preserving her own life and her own relationship with him. Without the Doctor there is no raggedy man for Amy, no Rory the Roman and no Mels to set the two of them up.

"Time can be rewritten!"

She fights a bitter laugh. "Not those times. Not one line. _Don't you dare_." She thinks of all the time they've spent together and all the moments, happy and sad; she wouldn't trade them for anything, wouldn't spare him this heartbreak and lose everything. "It's okay. It's okay, it's not over for you. You'll see me again. You've got all of that to come." Reassuring him hurts because it shouldn't be happening; her last minute and she's telling this scruffy idiot that he'll be fine. "You and me, time and space. _You watch us run_."

She knows she is crying but can't find it in herself to care anymore. The look in his eyes is _killing_ her just as the computer surely will, and she longs to hold him and tell him it will all be all right and he'll see her again someday (all true but all still lies, and he deserves better).

"River, you know my name." His tone is desperate, searching.

Oh god, this is not the time. _Tell me something happy,_ she thinks with a smudge of annoyance. _You wittering idiot, don't just sit there and wonder. I don't have that much time._

AUTO-DESTRUCT IN TEN

"You whispered my name in my ear."

NINE

She ignores him, fiddling with the wires and thinking of last night, of anything but this.

( _Somewhere in time the Doctor holds her hand and covers her eyes as he leads her out of the TARDIS. The humming of the Towers ruins the surprise ever so slightly, but Darillium is beautiful and the smile on the Doctor's face, breathtaking._ )

EIGHT

Their eyes meet and he looks anguished.

SEVEN

SIX

She puts the crown on her head and readies herself to make the connection. Her mind is distant, calm and composed, as far away as she can be. It feels almost surreal, and she wonders vaguely what will happen, if there is indeed an afterlife, or if she'll just blink into darkness and not feel a thing. She never doubted the latter until now.

"There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name-"

FIVE

"There's only one time I could..."

FOUR

"Hush, now," she says. He's wittered away her last few moments and she should be angry, but she can't feel anything but love.

THREE

TWO

"Spoilers," she says.

( _Somewhere in time the Doctor wishes her goodbye for the last time although she didn't know that until now. He smiles mechanically and inclines his head for a kiss, chaste and gentle. She smiles into it and tries to calm the nagging dread pooling in her chest at the look in his eyes. There aren't any more spoilers for her to hold back, she thinks as she deepens the kiss, and there is only air and fabric and skin between their bones._ )

ONE

She connects the cables and her body jolts and fizzes, the world fuzzing golden and slowly fading to black. Her skin feels like it's melting and the air around her is impossibly hot, so hot that she can't bear it and can't wait for it to end. It's only a moment but it passes so impossibly slowly that she thinks she could go mad in the space of a second. The pain fades to black in the snap of an instant, and cold oblivion welcomes her with open arms.

ii.

She remembers this day, later, when she's tending to the children. She remembers the sensation of explosion through her veins, electricity snapping through her joints and snaking along her bones. She remembers him, confused and uncomprehending and so stupidly useless. She remembers loving him.

She also remembers seeing something old and terrible in his eyes, the burden of the Time Lord or whatever he calls it. It overwhelms, burning like a sun in her mind as the surge of power courses through her body. All the time streams possible lead to this moment, she can feel them twining through her biology. There was no other way, and they both know it. But he is the Doctor, he is a Time Lord, and he is always at odds with futility and impossibility.

She remembers the thought as well, the realisation that she's alive in some respect. The realisation of what he's done for her—the entire history of the universe sits at her fingertips, and the ability to recreate it. Exist until she bores of it, and then oblivion waits for her, just as she'd planned.

She remembers thinking she could melt with love as she felt her body forming inside the computer, as sensation was restored and her eyes opened to a new world.

Wind stirs her hair and dress, carrying with it warmth and the fresh scent of grass and sky. A millisecond of eyelashes flash upward and she can see the world through the blur, shining bright and full of promises.

Her sight snaps to normal and she meets the eyes of a little girl grinning up at her.

"It's okay. You're safe. You'll always be safe here. The Doctor fixed the data core. This is a good place now. But I was worried you might be lonely so I brought you some friends. Aren't I a clever girl?"

Footsteps sound behind her, rustling the grass. She can hear the brush of fabric and the quiet sound of breathing, of _existence_ , and it may be the biggest blessing of them all.

"Aren't we all?"

She turns to see them all, striding toward her across the wide lawn, dressed in the clothes she saw them in the day before they left. Miss Evangelista spoke and now she smiles, finally reaching her. Proper Dave, Other Dave, and Anita follow closely behind. Her hearts might actually _sing_ from the sight, and once more she finds herself fighting tears. They're grossly unprofessional and she still does have a team to set an example for.

(They're dead, of course, and so is she, but in seeing them she still feels a sense of duty and a little bit of guilt.)

"Oh, for Heaven's sake," she exclaims, and a smile worms its way onto her face. "He just can't do it, can he? That man, that impossible man. He just can't give in!"

iii.

 _When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it will never end._

 _But however hard you try, you can't run forever._ _Everybody knows that everybody dies, and nobody knows it like the Doctor._

 _But I do think that all the skies of the all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever, for one moment, accepts it._

 _Everybody knows that everybody dies..._

 _But not every day._

 _Not today._

 _Some days are special._

_Some days are so, so blessed._

 _Some days, nobody dies at all._

iv.

It takes 140 years, but eventually the time comes.

It's strange, explaining to a child that the time has come and you want to die.

"You don't want to stay? Are you bored? Unhappy? Do you hate me?" Charlotte shifts nervously from scruffy sneaker to scruffy sneaker, staring up at River with an expression of unabashed shock.

"It's just time, I think."

"But you can live _forever_ ," comes the confused reply. "It's not time to die if you don't have to die."

"Charlotte," River says quietly, "I'm old. My body hasn't aged in years. In fact, it's been regressing in age-yes, I _have_ noticed-but I'm still aging mentally. I'm just a consciousness suspended in virtual reality, waiting to get bored enough to die."

"So you _are_ bored then. You should leave the history books;, go to, I don't know, science? Mystery? Even romance, but Doctor Moon says I'm not allowed near those." She scuffs her shoes again and tries to smile. "You don't have to leave."

"I've lived for a hundred and forty years in the computer core, Cal."

"Yeah, and you keep going back to the same books; all this stuff from 20th century New York and 21st century England. It's _boring._ Go explore!"

"I'm done with all of that now," River says, crossing her legs. She doesn't remember walking into the house and sitting down, but now she and Charlotte are sitting in armchairs in the middle of a well-furnished parlor. Two half-empty cups of tea are on the table between them; the windows are open and a fresh, crisp breeze blows through the room. "I think that it's time to let go. Not because I'm bored or because I don't like you."

"But _why_?"

"It's hard to explain." River fumbles with the idea for a few moments, uncrossing her legs and leaning forward. She takes a sip of tea and winces at the bitter, over-brewed taste. "I've lived a long time, even before this. I'd always thought that if I knew I had to die, I'd do it on my own terms. I'd sit back and revisit everything that I could that I'd loved, and say my goodbyes. And then I'd greet death like I wasn't scared of it."

"You're not scared to die? How? I've been here for so long, and I still don't-" Charlotte sighs and rubs at her forehead with her palm in frustration. "I'm scared, River. Doctor Moon says that someday the computer is going to fail and then I'm not going to exist-how doesn't that scare you?"

"I'm already dead, Charlotte-this is just some kind of drawn out afterlife. It's infinite, and that's not what I want. I don't want to live forever, you know. I want to move on. I mean-look. It's like growing up, in a sense. There's a point where you outgrow your old toys and your old friends and all of your old interests. And I think I've outgrown running from death. There's no point to it anymore; when I'm not busy, I feel it sneaking up on the edge of my consciousness, and it's not scary anymore. It's somewhere I've already been."

"But it's _dying_ ," Cal argues, and she looks more put out than sad, or even worried. "It's the end, you can't undo that. Don't you want more time?"

"After a hundred and forty years, I think I've had time enough. I've been happy, led a bountiful life both here and alive."

"And if the Doctor comes back?"

"He won't," River says, "because if he'd planned to save me, it already would have happened. He won't, because he knows that everything has its time and everybody dies, and that this is my afterlife. If it's still a life after all. It's not even existence, Charlotte-I'm an echo of a mind uploaded into a computer core and made alive and functional. I'm not _real_ , and if I'm not real, then what's the point? Whatever I was, it's gone. I don't think it's worth living as a shadow of something long dead."

"But it's _dying_ ," Cal protests stubbornly even as she nods. "I mean-I'm not going to stop you. Is it what you want, though, you're not just unhappy?"

"I'm happy," River says with a small smile.

"It's not because the Doctor isn't here?"

"My existence isn't utterly dependent on his, you know," River remarks, the shadow of a smile playing around her mouth. "It's thanks to him that I exist and am what I am, but I don't need him here to find meaning in life."

"I don't want you to leave," Cal admits, and closes her mouth then with a slightly sour expression. "I mean-don't tell the others—but, you're my favourite. The way you deal with things and the way you live is so interesting that it seems like such a waste to let you go. I don't want you to be unhappy, though. Isn't it such a conundrum?"

The smile on her face is a strange mix of childishly beatific and shrewd. It reminds River of all of the years that have passed and the changes the girl has undergone. Physically, none of them age, but mentally is another story. Cal's mind has been allowed to develop and mature, slowly but surely. She acts her age to some extent; the last hundred and forty years have changed her and sobered her. The girl in the computer that River had to die for is gone and in her place is an old woman in a child's body. Charlotte watches her with old eyes and files away whatever she's seeing somewhere inside her; River can see conclusion dawning across her face even as she takes another sip of tea and tries to keep her face impassive. The girl's hands shake and the cup clatters on the saucer.

"I guess this is goodbye, then?"

"You can release me here, then?"

"Yes. I mean, if you're sure. It's easy to make you stop existing, just erasing you from the Core computer. It's as easy as hitting a delete button on a computer, really. But it's different, you see. Higher stakes. And I _am_ going to miss you-I wasn't lying about you being my favourite."

"I know," River says quietly and presses her palms together on her lap. "Thank you. I'll miss you, to whatever extent I can in nonbeing."

"You don't believe in an afterlife?"

"No. Even if I did, I don't think I could get it in this sort of state of being. I'm the echo of an afterthought, just an amalgamation of memories and the vaguest recollection of a consciousness. I guess that makes it easier to die, knowing that I'm not quite River Song, only the reflection of a shadow of her."

"I guess so," Cal says, and puts down her cup. "Would you like to go now?"

"I think that would be for the best," River says, and lifts her own teacup to take one last sip.

"I'm never gonna forget you," Charlotte says, reaching out to her, palms outstretched.

Wordlessly, River puts the cup and saucer back on the table and steels her nerves. In the pit of her stomach she can feel something stirring; not terror but a great, all- encompassing calm. She feels collected and oddly detached as she rests her hands on Cal's, palms down. The contact isn't necessary but she can tell Charlotte needs the gesture and the reassurance; her hands haven't stopped shaking.

"Goodbye, River Song," Charlotte says quietly, her forehead wrinkling ever so slightly and her eyes closing in concentration.

Beginning in her feet, River can feel a nothingness climbing up her body. It's curious that she can feel herself disappearing, that the sensation is so different from her previous deaths. It feels like sleep, a slow careful crawl up her body. She can't move, and for a moment she can see everything and remember it all, all her teachings and all the time she spent on him, looking for him and finding him and having him.

(She doesn't know it, but at this exact moment in time the Doctor is sitting with a younger her on a snowy hill on a distant prison planet, clutching her hand like it is an anchor as the snow falls around them. It's so quiet that he thinks they may really be the only two in the universe, and the thought makes him kiss her, because he loves her for making him feel so significant, and because she dulls the terror. He always runs, but now they run together and now he knows he can run to her. This is where it begins, the trust. And this is when River Song disappears from the universe fully.)

Her vision darkens and she thinks a final thought, of him and of days that were not of him, of loving and losing and thinking she'd lost him, knowing she had him, and that years upon years of ultimate faith were so very worth it. If her face still remained, it would carry on it a nostalgic smile; as she fades into nonbeing, she thinks this is not a death, but merely a bookend. A way to mark where everything ends and everything begins again. Their days continue, just out of order and scattered willy-nilly throughout time and among the stars.

There are always days for them, days full of exultation and firsts and lasts. Her life was (is) full of them, and in the moment that it fades, she can feel them humming in time and glowing in her memory, summer-bright and hopeful. She'd never admit it to Charlotte, but she lived for those days, for the realisation that her time was always valid and that she was precious, loved and significant even in the giant scope of the universe.

She gives them up into the void with the knowledge that her life is not wasted and that this is the best way, and she never looks back or reconsiders the choice to say goodbye.

( _so job died, being old and full of days_.)


End file.
